Move to mobile is ‘tremendous opportunity,’ Google AdWords VP said
WASHINGTON – More Google searches are initiated from smartphones than from desktops and other devices in 10 countries including the U.S. and Japan.
Jerry Dischler, VP of product management for Google’s AdWords, dropped that tidbit in a May 5 company blog post.
“Billions of times per day,” Dischler wrote, “consumers turn to Google for I want-to-know, I want-to-go, I want-to-do, and I want-to-buy moments. And at these times, consumers are increasingly picking up their smartphones for answers. This presents a tremendous opportunity for marketers to reach people throughout all the new touchpoints of a consumer’s path to purchase.”
AdWords is Google’s online advertising service, which uses keywords to tailor ads to consumers.
“Google is a company built on intent and immediacy,” Dischler continued. “Our mission has always been to connect people with what they are looking for in the exact moment they are looking. These are moments that matter to consumers, to marketers and to us at Google because they are when decisions are being made and preferences shaped.”
Google is not alone in seeing a greater shift to mobile technology. Last month, Facebook reported that 70% of its online traffic from its 1 billion-plus users now comes from mobile devices.
The average consumer now uses 1.3 gigabytes of data per month. Greater demand by consumers for data has led cellular providers to demand more spectrum space.
The move to online searches has apparently impacted companies’ bottom lines as both Google and Facebook have seen a decline in ad viewership. Facebook has raised its ad prices by 285% while Google has also seen the price of its mobile ads rise steadily.
Greater mobility has also lead to a host of new issues, not the least among them security with a report showing 1 in 5 Google Android Apps is now infected with Malware.
Google based the decree on internal data but did not cite exact percentages of mobile compared to desktop searches, raw data or the other eight countries rounding out the top 10.
